The Man Who Got Everything He Ever Wanted
by anotherjocosemaverick
Summary: Dark and twisted. Set post Willy Wonka. Work out the character in this short story who is struggling with life and see a whole new spin on the original story.


Mr Bucket and Chocolate Factory

The man sat at his desk. The tears that filled his eyes were not out of sadness nor love nor happiness. These tears were the result of another force at work, or to be more precise an incalculable amount of forces coming from all directions at once it seemed. Stress had marked his face like the bark of a tree, eyes hollow, encased with circular darkness. To look at the man you could say his eyes themselves were blue or brown or any other colour. This may sound odd and confusing but the fact is why does it matter what colour the iris of the seeing utensil the great god gave us is if there is no life left in them? At one time or another in our short earthly existence we are mutilated by exhaustion, often beyond recognition. If only the plight of this poor soul was that lucky. He was not exhausted; he had been exhausted for decades. This man was completely broken. Yet he worked, scribbling notes, tapping keyboards and making phone calls. Only to pause occasionally to put his hand on his brow, close his eyes and sigh. He did this in a manner almost identical to the man who proceeded him in this position had done, albeit the 'great fantastic genius' who lead the way before him had done so far less often. He was the man to blame for this, wasn't he? He was the one who had brought the burden of prosperity and security upon him. Working at his desk all hours with bills, unions, taxes and economic crisis circling him, like the shadows of fear do to a small child in the dark. Did this make him dream of being poor again? You bet it did. He would trade all the gold and chocolate in the world to get that poverty of the pocket back, as it far triumphs over poverty of the soul.

There was a quiet knock on the door.

"What?" The man at the desk said.

However he did not ask this quizzically, it was more demanding and impatient, he did not want the answer or to be disturbed. The door came slowly open. The immigrant edged in the room. He had to push the door closed with more force than any normal man would due to his stature. He was bizarrely not much higher than the door knob itself, the bright white skin that made up his face instantly creased out of fear when he saw the expression on the man at the desks face. He tried to conceal this with his locks of long and beautiful golden hair but it did not matter. The man at the desk did not care about the immigrant anymore, or at least not as much as he used to. The immigrant wondered if the man who sat locked in a solid painted oak prison even remembers loving him like he used to. As the man slammed down his pen and locked eyes with the immigrant he concluded he did not.

The immigrant approached the man at the desk and as he had always done and whispered into his ear.

"We need to talk" soft and musical his voice was despite circumstance.

"Not now" was the response, dry and cold like a January wind.

For a second, nay less than that, the immigrant had a tiny pinprick of a thought, a notion that he would argue with the response he had just received. He did not. He simply strolled to the centre of the room which was a few feet away from the half desk that the man was working at and announced his news.

"We are not working tomorrow. In fact, I am sorry to say that we are striking from tomorrow until our demands are met."

That would have caught the man at the desk by no surprise whatsoever normally. It wasn't even the news itself that had caught him by surprise; he was intelligent enough to know what was going on in his own factory. Nevertheless, not once had any of his immigrant workers physically spoke up like that. They always whispered, always. Only this provoked a response from the vacuous space a happy life once dwelt in.

"But the health and safety offic-"He began tiredly.

"To hell with health and safety" The quick retort came before the man at the desk had time to finish. "We should be allowed to wear our traditional clothes to work regardless of what some shitty government office says" he continued.

Now the man at the desk was truly stunned. Shouting, swearing, where did they get all of this from? His mind wrestled with the possibilities of how and when his workers would have learnt this. The answer was far too obvious. They did not live in the factory anymore. It wasn't too long before they had learnt they had to be paid in money in the 1970's and after that was resolved the right to leave the compound and have their own property with their family the early 80's, in fact they would have probably been cursing and swearing since that day. It was everywhere in this country, the supermarkets, the papers and most possibly from the 20th century's greatest evil. The television. This was just one of the many things his mentor had not just showed him but he had foreseen it, long before satellite television and reality TV. His mentor knew that this box of brainwashing rubbish spouting IQ depleting filth would corrupt innocent minds. And now it had corrupted his once so sweet beautiful innocent immigrant workers.

Whilst this was all rushing through his mind not once did it cross his once vivid and joyous brain that he was corrupted himself. The hypocrisy was on another level beyond self-comprehension as it was by all men and women who were enslaved by the modern elitist system. Furthermore he had not noticed that the immigrant was still in the room, eyes sternly fixed upon the hat that sat above the half mannequin he had at the back of the desk. Of course this hat belonged to his mentor, his saviour, his father figure and his peril. That man, if rumours were to be believed, was swanning in some island in the South Pacific right now the very island from which he had amassed all these tiny immigrants from to come and work in his factory. The newspapers would have you believe that these were unlawfully kept as slaves dating from before the 1960's! They had never understood the arrangement and this was why some of the older immigrants had been indoctrinated into starting a huge lawsuit against what used to be the world's largest and most prosperous chocolate factory. This was just one more thing that he had to thank the magnificent W.W for.

The immigrant had gone before he knew it. Once again the problems of the man at the desk overshadowed the needs, wants and attention deserved by the people whom he owed so much to. So much happiness when he first took over was all down to them and now it was gone, into the abyss, never to return. The innocence and morality of a beautiful young man was now a memory so old and fractured you wondered if it would slip into legend and then myth. It was time to go home, the man at the desk thought. He would deal with the strike, the energy companies and the tax man in the morning hopefully.

"Ha" he scoffed at thought. His work would never be done. Therefore he slipped on his purple and quite frankly horrifically out-dated jacket that matched his horrific and out-dated trousers, picked up a worn brown walking stick with a dirty brass handle and left the office not bothering to shut the door behind. On his way to the elevator he passed a heavy switch that turned off the power to the factory part of the compound. If there had been a small boy perhaps outside the factory gate, perhaps with dusty blonde hair and perhaps full of dreams and love, he would have seen the letters that lit up the sign on the factories chimney go out one by one. This would start with the 'A' and end with the 'W' of which the word began. Meanwhile the man who flicked the switch stepped into a rather grand glass elevator with trim that used to be painted gold but was now showing rust and it's much cheaper metal interior that had been for so long concealed beneath the paint and departed by pressing the "Family Room" button. The lift sped off slantways.

When he exited the lift and pushed a door covered with a non-uniform pattern of shapes ranging from lines to dodecahedrons and everything in-between he was then in the family room. This room used to bring him so much relief and warmth when it was the hub for his once large-ish family. Now it was cold and silent as all but one member had passed out of his life and he had not replaced them with more of his own flesh and blood. This is because he believed love had eluded him. This was not the case. Love had never eluded this man; in fact he had many more opportunities for a love of his own than most do in a life time and more than he would ever know. The problem was the factory had always come first.

The man approached the room off to the side of the main room he had first entered, nodding at a picture of his grandfather Joseph on the mantelpiece as he always had on the way. The thought of seeing his mother briefly released endorphins in the man's brain and half a smile almost cracked his face. She had always been there for him. Granted in her late 80's she had not been able to do quite as much as before but at least he was not completely alone. Any delusional ramblings from her sweet mouth would cure him enough of his pain to at least approach a human form if only for a tiny period of time. He carefully opened the door. Of course she was asleep; he had forgotten how late it was. Time doesn't matter to a man who never has any. She had fallen asleep in her armchair a book clutched in her frail hands, glasses on and lights on. Again the rare thought to smile came upon him she was truly the personification of peace, a living, breathing piece of tranquillity. The chocolate factory owner went over to the armchair. He winced and stepped back as he touched the woman's pale forehead it was ice. Colder than first snow on a gloveless hand even.

Charlie Bucket's mother was dead.


End file.
